The present invention generally relates to messaging and more particularly to techniques for sending messages with automatic device selection and content conversion.
Advances in technology have created many ways of communicating with a user. For example, users may communicate using email, instant messaging (IM), short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS), facsimile (fax), voice, etc. Users may have any combination of devices that communicate using the above methods. When a sender desires to communicate with a recipient, the sender needs to know what devices the recipient is using and how to communicate with the devices. For example, the sender needs to know the address for the recipient's device, such as a telephone number, email address, etc. Further, the sender needs to use the same device as the recipient's device in order to send a message to the recipient. For example, a SMS device is used to send a SMS message to a SMS device, an IM device is used to send an instant message to an IM device, etc.
Accordingly, the sender needs to determine the appropriate methods of communicating with the recipient and also needs to have access to the same device that will receive the message. This includes many disadvantages. For example, a user may not be able to determine all addresses associated with a user. For example, a sender may only know a recipient's email address. The sender is then restricted in that only emails can be sent to a user. Although the sender may contact the recipient through email, the recipient may have other devices that offer a better means of contacting the recipient or devices that the recipient would prefer to be contacted through. For example, a recipient may prefer to receive instant messages while at work and instant messages may be the fastest way to reach the user. However, the sender would only be able to send an email.